Initiative 522, McGinn vs. Murray, Conlin vs. Sawant: Are these too close to call? Hardly!

Any­one who has ever run for office and lost or spent a few sea­sons work­ing dai­ly on an unsuc­cess­ful cam­paign knows that con­ced­ing defeat is dif­fi­cult and unpleas­ant. It’s under­stand­ably hard to go from ener­get­i­cal­ly cam­paign­ing one hour to accept­ing an appar­ent defeat the next, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you’re at a party.

That’s why it has become a time-hon­ored tra­di­tion in Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics for los­ing cam­paigns and can­di­dates to sug­gest on Elec­tion Night that their con­tests are “too close to call”, jus­ti­fy­ing this posi­tion based on the fact that Wash­ing­ton, like its south­ern neigh­bor Ore­gon, is a vote-by-mail state.

We saw a num­ber of cam­paigns or their sup­port­ers embrace this tra­di­tion last night. For instance, here was the email that the Yes on 522 cam­paign sent to its sup­port­ers (a graph­ic with a sim­i­lar mes­sage was post­ed on Face­book):

Dear Friend,

We are eager­ly await­ing the results from today’s elec­tion here in Wash­ing­ton State, but to be hon­est, we just don’t know if I‑522 passed yet.

Because Wash­ing­ton is a vote-by-mail state we won’t have a final tal­ly of the votes tonight. Over the next few days more bal­lots will be count­ed and we will keep you post­ed as we learn more.

Thank you for sup­port­ing our cam­paign and the broad­er GMO label­ing move­ment. We would not be so close with­out your tire­less work, gen­er­ous dona­tions and unwa­ver­ing support.

From our table to yours,

Delana Jones

Cam­paign Manager

Yes on 522

Seat­tle May­or Mike McGinn, mean­while, was greet­ed by cheers of “Four more years! Four more years!” as he arrived to speak at his elec­tion night par­ty at 95 Slide. Acknowl­edg­ing Mur­ray’s appar­ent vic­to­ry dur­ing his speech, McGinn said “We know we’re going to have to call Ed Mur­ray and con­grat­u­late him…” He was inter­rupt­ed by sup­port­ers who shout­ed that it was too soon to con­cede. McGinn prompt­ly backed off. “Okay, not yet, we’ll count a few more votes,” he said.

Kshama Sawan­t’s sup­port­ers like­wise sug­gest­ed last night that the con­test between her and Coun­cilmem­ber Richard Con­lin was too close to war­rant a con­ces­sion. From an email they sent to The Stranger and oth­er media out­lets:

Sawant declined to con­cede Tues­day night, not­ing that in the 2013 pri­ma­ry, she gained over two per­cent in sub­se­quent bal­lot drops, and, in her 2012 state leg­isla­tive cam­paign, she gained three per­cent. Giv­en her cam­paign’s tremen­dous momen­tum in clos­ing weeks and her his­to­ry of strong sup­port in lat­er bal­lots, the cam­paign will wait for sub­se­quent bal­lot releases.

Even Van­dana Slat­ter, who is los­ing to Lynne Robin­son in Belle­vue by a more than 2‑to‑1 mar­gin, says she is hold­ing out hope of even­tu­al­ly win­ning, though she admit­ted to The Seat­tle Times that over­tak­ing Robin­son would be “a heavy lift”. Slat­ter invest­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of her own mon­ey in her cam­paign for city coun­cil and ran hard. She oust­ed incum­bent Don David­son in August, but came in sec­ond, well behind Robin­son in a fore­shad­ow­ing of last night’s returns.

It is cer­tain­ly true that, unlike oth­er places in the coun­try, it takes longer for bal­lots here to be processed, tab­u­lat­ed, and incor­po­rat­ed into the count. That’s a con­se­quence of hav­ing a vote-by-mail sys­tem, in which Elec­tion Day is mere­ly the grand finale of Elec­tion Month — the last oppor­tu­ni­ty vot­ers have to return bal­lots that arrived in their mail­box­es weeks prior.

But regard­less, as we can see from look­ing at elec­toral his­to­ry, cam­paigns that are in the lead on Elec­tion Night in Wash­ing­ton usu­al­ly remain ahead through­out the count and fin­ish vic­to­ri­ous on the day that elec­tion results are certified.

Do mar­gins change? Yes, absolute­ly, as the Sawant cam­paign not­ed in its brief memo. But do leads get sur­ren­dered? Not unless they are thin to begin with.

Win­ning cam­paigns on Elec­tion Night tend to stay win­ning cam­paigns, while los­ing cam­paigns stay los­ing cam­paigns. Again, as you’d expect, the pri­ma­ry excep­tions to this are cam­paigns that start out close behind their com­peti­tors on Elec­tion Night, like Sharon Peaslee’s cam­paign for school board in Seat­tle two years ago.

For a los­ing cam­paign to become a win­ning cam­paign, it must be with­in strik­ing dis­tance of its rival (e.g. with a 48.x% or 49.x% share of the vote) and late-arriv­ing bal­lots must break its way. I don’t believe any of the afore­men­tioned cam­paigns (Yes on I‑522, Mike McGinn for May­or, Kshama Sawant for Coun­cil, Van­dana Slat­ter) are with­in strik­ing dis­tance of their oppo­nents. It’s with­in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty that late-arriv­ing bal­lots will break for all of them. But a lot of bal­lots would have to break in their favor for each to over­come the deficits they face.

None of these cam­paigns cur­rent­ly has more than 46.2% of the vote, so I think it’s hard to argue any of them are poised for a comeback.

Of the four, Sawant is  the most com­pet­i­tive, which speaks to the hard work her sup­port­ers put into her cam­paign. They helped her make a cred­i­ble bid for Seat­tle City Coun­cil against incum­bent Richard Conlin.

Last August, I stopped by the elec­tion night par­ties of the three may­oral can­di­dates I antic­i­pat­ed would get the most votes: Peter Stein­brueck­’s, Ed Mur­ray’s, and Mike McGin­n’s. Sure enough, the three of them fin­ished in the top three spots. While Mur­ray and McGinn start­ed out and fin­ished close to each oth­er, with more than 25% of the vote apiece, Stein­brueck start­ed out at around 15%.

Even though it was obvi­ous on Elec­tion Night that he had lost, Stein­brueck was amus­ing­ly wel­comed to the stage at his par­ty as “Seat­tle’s next mayor”.

He then pro­ceed­ed to urge his sup­port­ers to keep the faith, not­ing that many bal­lots were out­stand­ing and not yet counted.

But by the time all of the bal­lots were count­ed, Stein­brueck still had around the same per­cent­age of the vote that he start­ed with. Here is a chart show­ing the day-by-day evo­lu­tion of results in the August win­now­ing election:

Sim­i­lar­ly, last year, Rob McKen­na and his cam­paign team held out hope that they would over­take Jay Inslee in the guber­na­to­r­i­al race. But they nev­er did. Inslee remained ahead, and with­in a few days they real­ized there was lit­tle chance that Inslee would be giv­ing up his lead. So they con­ced­ed.

Giv­en that I‑522 is being sound­ly beat­en in key swing coun­ties like Pierce and Spokane, and giv­en that the swing coun­ties that could off­set this are also vot­ing no on I‑522, I think it’s rea­son­able to con­clude that I‑522 will end up defeat­ed once all of the bal­lots are count­ed. Now, I could be wrong, since I do not have a crys­tal ball at my dis­pos­al, but I just don’t see a flood of late-arriv­ing bal­lots break­ing hard for I‑522 in crit­i­cal coun­ties like Sno­homish or Thurston. And that’s what they would need just to get close to fifty per­cent of the vote.

I‑522 enjoyed a fair­ly sub­stan­tial lead in ear­ly polling, as many ini­tia­tives often do. But then Mon­san­to, DuPont, Nes­tle, Kel­log­g’s, Coca-Cola, Pep­si, Gen­er­al Mills, and oth­er mas­sive cor­po­ra­tions showed up and plopped mil­lions of dol­lars into a cam­paign war chest that was sub­se­quent­ly used to buy every kind of adver­tis­ing there is… TV ads, radio ads, mail­ers, online ads. The whole enchilada.

The No cam­paign, prin­ci­pal­ly fund­ed and orches­trat­ed from out­side Wash­ing­ton State by the big names I list­ed above, pro­ceed­ed to try out a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als as mes­sen­gers in these ads, and I have no doubt they did exten­sive research to fig­ure out how to appeal to vot­ers in swing coun­ties. We can see from last night’s results that they have suc­ceed­ed, at least so far.

In Seat­tle, Mike McGinn and Kshawa Sawant may well end up clos­er to their oppo­nents than they are now. Again, it would­n’t sur­prise me if the mar­gins tight­en up. But will McGinn and Sawant be ahead a week from now, or on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion day? I doubt it. They are sim­ply not poised to over­take Mur­ray and Conlin.

Nathan Schlich­er, on the oth­er hand, is less than eight hun­dred votes behind Jan Angel in the 26th LD, which is a bat­tle­ground leg­isla­tive dis­trict if there ever was one. Schlich­er cur­rent­ly has 48.6% of the vote, while Angel has 51.4%.

That’s dis­con­cert­ing to Democ­rats, of course, but Schlich­er isn’t out yet. He’s behind, but he’s man­aged to stay with­in strik­ing dis­tance of Angel. That mat­ters. It’s con­ceiv­able that he could win; he just needs a rea­son­able num­ber of the late-arriv­ing bal­lots to break for him. Whether he gains or los­es ground today will be very impor­tant. That’s a race that tru­ly is too close to call at this point.

But in Seat­tle, I think we can say Ed Mur­ray and Richard Con­lin have been elect­ed, while across Wash­ing­ton State, I‑522 has gone down to defeat, the vic­tim of unprece­dent­ed cor­po­rate electioneering.